Arizona Coach Sean Miller Denies Offering to Pay Top Recruit

Last week, ESPN reported that Miller spoke with Dawkins about paying a top recruit, Deandre Ayton, $100,000 to sign with Arizona. Ayton did join Arizona, and is a front-runner to be selected first in the 2018 N.B.A. draft. The ESPN report, citing anonymous sources, said the conversation between Miller and Dawkins was captured by F.B.I. wiretaps.

Soon after ESPN’s report, Arizona’s Board of Regents announced a meeting for “legal advice and discussion regarding the University of Arizona men’s basketball and the multiple-year employment contract for the head men’s basketball coach.” The meeting, scheduled for Thursday at 4 p.m., Eastern time, is closed to the public.

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Miller has not coached the team since ESPN’s report was published. In his statement on Thursday, he called the news reports “inaccurate, false and defamatory.”